This is the dish that all Italians are born knowing how to cook. ← Possible exaggeration. It is easy as boiling water. ← Another exaggeration. It uses no seasonal ingredients or any other ingredient that any normal household would ever be without. ← Lie.
* olive oil
* garlic
* spaghetti
* Parmigiano Reggiano, and if you do not have this on hand always, then I just do not know what to say to you.
* fresh parsley.
Here basil is substituted for parsley. That was the thing that inspired it tonight, if you can call a regular go-to comfort meal inspired. This is the dish one makes when one come home from a night on the town. It is the equivalent of a cheese sandwich.
You see, the basil in the new Aerogarden kit is outpacing the other herbs in their pods. When the plants reach the lamps they will burn. Better to trim them now and equalize the height of all seven plants. I sense I will be doing this again before the lamps are adjusted upward. Check it out, Checkitouters.
The front row is three types of basil, lemon, globe and Genovese. It is the lemon basil and the Genovese basil that is outgrowing the four in the back. I know from experience that eventually the four in the back will predominate by height, but they are slower to start off. The four in back include oregano, mint, dill, and thyme.
Here's what the unit looks like on top of the refrigerator.
That was before ↑ the lemon basil and Genovese basil were trimmed. This is after ↓ the two basils were trimmed.
This seed kit was planted January 26, 2011. Now is April 16, 2011. So that's two months and a week plus or minus a day or so. Maybe I should feed it some more even though the lights on the unit haven't indicated yet. Sometimes we indoor gardeners have to use our own judgement and not rely on electronic indicators. Because you never know, it could be a dastardly plot to erode confidence in American technological knowhow.
What are the little red flakes?
ReplyDeleteThe little red flakes are mixed dried chile peppers. You can buy these in the grocery spice section as 'dried chili flakes,' but those come with a lot of inert seeds. These were from a variety of small bags of whole dried chiles that are popular in my city which has a large Latin population. They are also available in Asian markets as 'dried chili.' These were separate packages of arbole (tree) chiles, Japonese (Japanese), chipotle (dried, smoked jalapeño). I picked them all apart and separated the seeds and mixed the packages. The next time I do this, they will be a different but still similar mixture. So, to answer your question simply, something hot.
ReplyDeleteIf you could e-mail me with a few suggestions on just how you made your blog look this excellent, I would be grateful.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDelete1) I am using a standard Blogger template. I chose the template with the least design elements to it and dispelled with whatever elements I could at the time. This was from the set of templates that preceded the set that I see now. It is the 'nothing' template.
2) I do not accept advertisement to gunk it all up. That is, thee blog is not monetized. Its original purpose was to inform friends and to keep track, not to make money.
3) I'm shooting with a simple consumer-level Nikon D90, mostly with 50mm 1.4 lens which is my favorite. But I also use a telephoto for specific things, and a wide angle which is a fierce lens with specific unique demands for very limited purposes.
4) The blog is photo-oriented. The photos are re-sized and adjusted in Photoshop using standard every-day adjustments. Rob, a commenter here, has helped me tremendously with a few Photoshop suggestions. Without Photoshop, I would use GIMP.
Anon, I forgot to mention. Your comment appears as an email to me. As a comment It was salvaged from Blogger's spam filter. Because it is anon, as an email, your anonymity means that the email is a 'no-reply', and that means I cannot email you directly.
ReplyDelete